sportscotland are using local communities to drive the sporting legacy of Glasgow 2014 out across Scotland

Four years ago, when the announcement of Glasgow as the host city brought the promise of multi-million-pound investment in state-of-the- art new sporting facilities and regeneration, Inch Park was a collection of muddy, uneven rugby and football pitches. Te only structure on the site was a rusty abandoned shipping container with ‘Jimbo is tidy’ written on the side in graffiti. As a public space, let alone a sporting venue, Inch Park was profoundly unloved, and could not have felt further from the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Today, it is home to three sports clubs, a handful of schools’ PE classes, and as Glasgow 2014 officials celebrated cutting the ribbon on their new headquarters at Commonwealth House last week, local sportsmen and women

were getting the run of a new clubhouse at Inch Park, complete with changing facilities and an indoor gym space. As unlikely as it must have seemed when the Games were awarded, that small corner of south Edinburgh has been propelled to the forefront of the Scottish Government’s plans to shape a legacy for Glasgow 2014 – and it joins scores of communities across Scotland that are set to enjoy the benefits of the Glasgow event. Te changes at Inch Park have been made possible by the community sports hub programme, a £1.5m-a-year plan to create flexible, sustainable, community-led spaces for sport and recreation in every one of Scotland’s 32 local authority areas. “It came about as we were thinking through with our partners what